


The Museum

by SightlessSeer



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce, The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: museum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SightlessSeer/pseuds/SightlessSeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A museum featuring some familiar artifacts from the Tortall universe with some (hypothetical) modern theories about them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Museum

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work, so bare with me please. This was just an idea that I had one night and I thought it would be interesting. I could write other sections of the museum (e.g. a section on royalty maybe) if there is interest. I am sorry for any typos, I have no one to beta, please point them out and I will fix them.

…“And on your right we have a beautifully preserved mail shirt dating from about 430 H.E. It was found underneath the former palace in Corus within the catacombs, traditionally used for the burial of royalty. for reasons you will see later, we believe that this piece belonged to a simple noble, not a member of royalty, however, it is believed that due to her many achievements, they were granted a burial there. Unlike most mail shirts this, one has a beautiful gold wash on it and is very small. Some of you might attribute this to things like malnourishement as children and a generally unbalanced diet; however, the actual answer may surprise you. This shirt belonged to a woman knight. We know based on the carvings and tapestries that she was the first lady knight in centuries. She only managed to gain her shield by hiding her sex throughout her training as both a page and as a squire. Soon after winning her shield she revealed the king’s nephew to be a traitor. Following a trial by combat she successfully killed the traitor and was claimed to be a hero. Soon thereafter, she, and an unknown man at arms, set off for the desert to the south. While wandering she stumbled into a camp of the local tribesman known as Bazhir. She was forced to fight a hand-to-hand combat in order to earn admittance to their tribe and their hospitality. She triumphed over her opponent and was adopted by the tribe known as the Bloody Hawk. Many months later the lady knight left her new tribe and traveled east, eventually visiting Sarain, now a part of the Gallomaren Empire. While in Sarain this hero saved the recently banished princess of the former royal house of Jian Willima. From here the group, which also included a Shang master of the time, journeyed even further to the west into the Roof of the World and claimed The Dominion Jewel, which we will see later. After traveling south to the seaport of Udayapur They returned to Tortall aboard a diplomatic ship, sent by the king (sir Jonathan IV of Conté) to retrieve this hero. Following her return to Tortall this hero, known as the lioness due to her shield, is said to have found the, now dead, king’s traitorous nephew alive again, this is assumed to be legend or another nephew all together, and foils another of his plots for the throne. The lioness was appointed King’s Champion during the new king’s coronation; a post she held until she died in her late 80’s. 

Beside the mail we see a shield bearing a golden image of a rearing female lion on a red background. This is what makes researchers believe that this tomb is that of the lioness of myths, who reportedly had a shield matching this description. Remarkably this shield bears no signs of aging, even though, radiocarbon dating has dated this artifact to also have been made around 430 H.E. It was found in the same tomb as the golden mail shirt as well as many other period artifacts thus they are all believed to belong to the same person.

Here we have a most curious object. This too was found in the tomb of the Lioness. It appears to be a still burning ember of a fire hanging from a fine gold chain, however, not only is it cold to the touch, it is encased in a clear flawless crystal that can neither be cut, scratched or broken. Despite being analyzed by mass-spectrometers, scanning electron microscopes, and many other devises we still have no idea of what it is made from, how it was made nor what purpose it served, if any. Some scholars have speculated that it was simply a piece of jewelry, while others claim that it is of divine origin and holds many powers, other than being a curiosity.

Moving along we find a weapon called a naginata, or more commonly a glaive. It is a pole arm of Yamani origin. One of high quality, such as this is a rare find in the eastern lands. This particular glaive is known to have belonged to the lady knight, Keladry of Mindellan and was her preferred weapon. She obtained and learned the use of this weapon, as a child, while travelling with her family, who acted as ambassadors and negotiated a treaty with the people of the aforementioned isles. Lady knight Keladry was the first woman to openly train as a knight in Tortall in well over 100 years. During her life Keladry killed the man known as Blayce the Gallan, the inventor of the first known automaton and undoubtedly a wonderful engineer. The automatons he built were made from the bones of some large humanoid animal, of which no fossils have ever been found, covered in metal, operated by chains and pulleys, and powered by an unknown energy source. These devises were causing havoc for the Tortallans on the battle fields during the Scanran war of 460-463 H.E. For destroying this threat, Keladry was heralded a hero and received much acclaim. It is interesting to note that had Keladry not killed Blayce, our own automatons may have been far more advanced and capable of more than just flying aircraft, and working on assembly lines.

Past the Glaive, we have a typical bow of the era, however, the quiver of arrows that accompanies it, also having belonged to lady knight Keladry, are of an odd fletching. The feathers match no known animals of this or any other region of the world. Additionally, in a test of 50 shots using one of these arrows, the archer’s target was struck every single time. The reason for this impeccable accuracy is unknown, since the archer, a good friend of mine, was no world champion and the targets were over 100m away. There have been speculations as to why this might be, such as the feathers having been placed to place a more favorable spin on the arrow, and the feathers having no effects at all and instead it being the traditionally forged arrow heads accounting for this accuracy, however, no theory has been proven as of yet.

Now lets move onto the next section..."


End file.
